


the life of the world to come

by volefriend



Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 16:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8292520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volefriend/pseuds/volefriend
Summary: It's New Years 2016. It's also dangerously close to the apocalypse. Cassandra has to deal, whether she likes it or not.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "Hey, OP, isn't WicDiv _already_ dark enough?" Haha, no, sorry. This was, however, meant to be about 4k words shorter. My bad.
> 
> Warnings: lots of character death (aka most of the main cast), but entirely offscreen; lots of minor eye/body horror; general pre-apocalyptic feelings and images. Also, spoilers up to and including #22/Vol. 4.
> 
> Things this was inspired by: [this Gillen tweet about The Norns and Dionysus being the last gods with a chance at 2016](https://twitter.com/kierongillen/status/682634039392604160), [this Gillen ask about the story potentially going apocalyptic](http://kierongillen.tumblr.com/post/145044310187/is-depicting-a-future-pantheon-that-hasnt-happen), a variety of very _very_ good tumblr posts about Cass and Dio interacting (although I ended up going the Cass/Laura route here instead), and my own rampant speculation about 1. a potential Cass vs. Laura endgame for the book after #22 and 2. how Cass' powers work. 
> 
> Named for the Mountain Goats album, of course, though I didn't listen to it nearly enough while writing this.

When she looks back- and she looks back often, just as she is meant to- Cassandra can pin the exact moment she knew the world was fucked.

It was late September and increasingly cool at night; there were a flurry of sirens passing by on the street in front of her apartment; the living room was covered in thick glowing thread. Divining was harder to do with Skuld and Verdandi in bed, presumably sleeping off lingering thoughts of ripped off limbs and bloody machinery, but it was far from impossible. If anything it was even more natural. Pulling the string of one of her old articles or old memories had a certain ease to it when she wasn’t sifting through the minds of two others as well. When recalling that night afterward, she remembered little about how things went wrong. Her strongest feeling was of the lightness of the process, the way she’d made it a part of her flesh and blood, its complicated ebbs and flows reduced to the flick of her wrist.

She was an hour into the process, maybe, when it glimmered in the distance: a prodding realization sitting in the corner of the room, aching to be touched, new and bold. Sometimes she could pull out four or five of these when she worked, and she reached toward it as if it was nothing more than a small piece of the night’s whole -

\- and felt the scent of rotting fruit congeal her throat, a cry dying deep inside. The muscles in her legs dissolved like jelly. Sweat covered her palms so quickly as if to bubble. She was so used to words, those usefully blunt objects, that when she saw images instead she barely comprehended them. Deepening shadows, a curl of fire, a blossoming flower. More blood than she’d ever seen. The setting sky.

It was some time later, long after she’d thrown up and not too long after she’d realize sleep wouldn’t come, that she realized the apocalypse had curled up in her brain and rooted itself there.

-

On the last day of 2015 Cassandra nearly texts Hazel. This is the fifth time in a fortnight that she’s seen 11:00 on the clock and had to stop herself; three months of daily check-ins had ingrained a habit in her. It still doesn’t feel right to have her texts suddenly end in the middle of December, but that is no worse than Hazel’s messages ending at the same time, long lines of bright red emojis cut off like a child’s construction paper. Today, at least, she has stopped herself from looking at the texts altogether.

Part of her- the part that usually dominates- is telling her to open them anyway. _Go on and do it. It’s not like it’s going to be the thing that kills you. Make yourself remember why you’re about to do something so fucking stupid._

But she is already having a hard enough time looking at the list of things she needs to do, pinned to the wall behind thick rows of fate-string, scrawled in Sharpie the night before in a pre-sleep fit. Dionysus had said once- in an email? straight to her face?- that writing things down made them inescapably real, which was exactly why she made lists in the first place, even before godhood had her. This one isn’t even very long:

  * ****UNDERGROUND** **ASAP****


  * **DIVINING (BROCKLEY??)**


  * **PERSEPHONE**



When she put it down like that, it seemed so _easy._

The phone is still in her hand. She texts few people; some of the names on the first page, sorted and categorized by labels like _(Intern)_ or _(God),_ are people she hasn’t talked to in months. Usually because they’re dead. _Laura (Fangirl)_ sits four slots under Hazel, clawing at the screen. At the thought of touching it her thumb pangs as if struck. _What’s wrong with you,_ she thinks. _Get over it. You’re going to have to soon anyway._

She’s interrupted by a loud _pop,_ the first of many tonight. She’d been so deep in thought that she’s ashamed by how much it startles her. Her apartment’s windows don’t have the right angle to see fireworks, though, and they’re snapped shut to keep photographers away, in any case. She lets the back of her mind take over to spare a thought for the masses of London tonight, some inevitably at Pantheon-themed parties and bar events and memorial services.

They are all so close to the end, and so unaware. She dreams less than she ever did, these days, but when she does she can hear their voices hitched with panic, feel their shaking limbs graze past her. The feeling is fleeting and unfathomable. She can’t let it ever happen.

The phone is dark when she looks back down at it. She looks at her reflection in the image, curses herself, and uses it as an excuse to banish the thought of Laura Wilson.

After all, Laura Wilson is dead.

-

She has never liked the Underground, and now it is worse than ever. It drips with silence, blackness tracing around her legs, too warm for this weather. Perhaps it already longs for the children it so recently lost. Cassandra finds this image hard to shake when she treads in deeper, raising her boots as if moving through thick mud, her fingers making soft popping noises as she moves them against the drink in her hand. Ahead of her is a gaping maw ready to swallow, and she could believe it if she was told she was never going to come out. She’s going to die anyway; might as well welcome it.

The drink is for Dionysus. It’s a fruity pink thing from the corner store near her apartment, but Dio being Dio, he drinks it down like it’s liquid gold anyway. In the dim light of his lamp he looks like a hallucination of himself. His hands are shaking. When he licks some whipped cream off of his lip she notices his right eye is turning black, very slowly, before a small circle of white peels out in the middle and sits there, floating like an inverted lilypad. This is par for the course for him these days, as far as she knows.

“It’s not the first, is it?” He asks her once he’s done with the drink, the straw making loud groaning noises.

“That’s tomorrow- you don’t know the  _date?_ ”

“Shit,” He sounds breathless but genuinely surprised. “Cass, you shouldn’t be _here-_ ”

She rolls her eyes. She isn’t here for pity. “Yeah, I’m a depressing recluse who doesn’t feel joy, got it. I need to ask you something.”

“I hope you’re not here for the New Year’s party.” He smiles, lopsided.

It’s a cruel joke to make about yourself, considering the circumstances. Dio has not had a party in a long time. In retrospect, Cassandra wonders why she ever thought he might try to hold one, now that she’s watching him lean back against the wall and exhale softly, as if too tired to move. There is a scar on his neck that looks as if it is pulsing in the lamplight. His other eye is blood red around the iris.

“Have you seen Persephone?” She asks.

He doesn’t quite jolt but he pauses, ever so slightly. He stares straight at her for a second, more scared than shocked, but looks away before he speaks. “...I figured if anybody had seen her, it’d be you.”

He hasn’t. That’s the answer she expected, so her head shouldn’t suddenly feel so hot. “No signs, even? Not even something _small,_ a noise or whatever? Just...,”

“No. I’m awake twenty-four seven, so I probably would have heard someone come down here- I heard _you_. I mean, I don’t think I’m _that_ out of it yet.”

She presses her arms across her chest and huffs out a breath of white cold. Cassandra finds Dionysus to be a horribly difficult person, sometimes. He doesn’t mean to be. If anything he means to be walked on; far too affectionate for his own good, to people he barely even knows, especially now that he’s got little to nothing and no other outlet.

It occurs to her that the scar on his neck can’t be from that awful final party of his, like she’d automatically assumed. Gentle Annie would’ve fixed it up like she did the rest. But she doubts Annie survived Baphomet dying, and few people put up with Badb and her claws afterward besides Dio, down here in hell.

(He hadn’t shown at her funeral. Cassandra had wondered if the stress had killed him, after the Maenads had come so close and failed. But Hazel would be happy he’s still around. Cassandra remembers her searching the mourning masses for him and saying _I’m not going to another funeral this month._ )

“I’m sorry, Cass,” He says, twirling the straw from his drink. “I’ll look for her, but...I don’t think she’d let us find her. She probably doesn’t want to be found.”

Cassandra thinks of Laura’s eyes, the twitching white shapes inside, the draw of the cigarette far too smooth from her mouth, the inhuman way she would allow those tendrils to surround her like a cloud of fog.

Not  _Laura_.

“No, she doesn’t.” She responds, before getting up and turning around.

Dio stands up behind her, half-stumbling. “Wait. You’re leaving already?”

“I’ve...got to look into some things. Text me if you think of anything, but-,”

“No way,” He catches her arm, with a strange lightness, the kind that only comes with godhood and experience. “I’m not just letting you buy me a nice drink and then not saying thanks.”

“Well, you’re  _welcome_ , then.”

His smile is still tired, but it looks a little brighter. “Ha, _no._ I meant...you could stick around for awhile. I’ve got my stereo around here somewhere. New Year’s party.”

A very stupid part of her spares a moment for the idea of letting Dio have one last try at what he was made to do, a desperate imitation of what he’s lost, and staying here to waste a night just for the sake of it, something foolish and useless and horribly heartfelt.

“No. I’ve got to go.” She mumbles, and doesn’t listen when she hears his voice behind her.

-

She contemplates searching Valhalla. Who takes care of Valhalla now?

It had been empty enough the last time she had been there, when Hazel was the only one left living there. She’d gotten a call at eleven at night in November, and had dragged herself from her research, ushering Skuld and Verdandi into the building with her, to find the sun goddess staring silently down into Valhalla’s glowing basement. The air was crisp, as if none of the doors had closed and trees had grown into the sterile walls. Standing at the top of the stairs in her nightgown, its trail flowing behind her as if to give the impression that she floated an inch above the ground, Hazel looked like she had much less than five weeks ahead of her.

Cassandra had grown used to the look of relief on Hazel’s face when she saw The Norns had arrived. But it faded in a second, her hand barely moving from her mouth when she spoke. “Oh my god, isn’t it _awful?_ ”

“I guess? We _did_ witness a goddamn tentacle murder down there.” Cassandra glanced down, trying to find what Hazel was looking at. Was it just the machine? Hazel’s face was so drawn, wide eyes more akin to the moon, that she expected there was a corpse or an eldritch creature she was missing. But from her angle the basement only seemed to offer gray dust and a red glow.

Hazel turned away suddenly, cupping her jeweled hands over her ears. “I can’t take this anymore,” She swayed, slightly, enough that Skuld reached out a hand in case she fell. “I don’t know how you’re all listening to it. I don’t. I just don’t _know-_ ”

“Wait, listening to _what_?” Cassandra asked.

Hazel stopped cold, and looked at her like she was speaking in tongues.

“ _The machine!_ ” She yelped. “It’s got to be Woden’s machine! It’s so loud, it’s...it’s like something’s cracking? Or burning? How do you _not_ hear it?”

Cassandra paused. She took a second to reach into Skuld and Verdandi’s minds; both of them heard nothing. Hazel had begun to shake.

“...How about,” She said, “I go down there and check it out, and Skuld and Verdandi take you to lie down.”

“ _What?_ You can’t go down there _alone_! What if it’s going to explode or it burns you or...” Hazel scampered towards her, reaching toward her cloak before coming to a slow stop, realization dawning on her face. “You don’t believe me.”

“It’s...not that I don’t _believe_ you. It’s that I don’t hear _shit.”_

Hazel’s face scrunched up for a moment, like an upset toddler’s. She sniffled and then her makeup ran, a few streaks of blue and yellow streaming down her face, before she stained her embroidered sleeve wiping them away. When she took a deep breath to still herself Cassandra could see her running her fingers over her rings, trying to center herself with them.

“Can I at least stay here until you come back up?” She choked out.

There was nothing down there, besides the machine. Even with Woden gone, corpse presumably as rancid as he deserved, it glowed as if afire. Her shoes seemed much too loud against the tile as she approached, hyper-aware of the difference between shadow-people and actual flesh in the corner of her eye.

For just a second- just one, returning as quick as it came- she thought she saw a single vine, coiling around the machine’s peak, sliding down, ready to strike.

But only for a second.

Afterward they sat in Hazel’s too-bright bright-red bedroom, Skuld and Verdandi puttering around looking for something to eat a floor above. Hazel had maybe a dozen gaudy pillows to prop herself up with, but only tried holding them to her ears for a moment before giving up, squeezing her eyes shut as if that could ward off her acoustic demon.

“When I became a god, I thought...I _might_ go crazy?” She wouldn’t take her fingers from her rings, apparently trying to rub them down to ash. “But not from _this_.”

“What did you think it would be? The dying part or the _constant flaming chaos all around you_ part?” Cassandra asked.

Hazel giggled, an odd, harsh noise as if overpowering something else. “The dying part. I remember thinking when Luci died that I was going to...just break, at some point. When I didn’t it felt _weird._ Like I didn’t do what I was _supposed_ to,” She took one of the pillows that had been by her ear and tucked it to her chest, not quite looking at anything. “But that’s over now, I guess.”

Hazel’s feet poked out from her gown and dangled slightly off the bed. They looked bony, her toenails for once unpainted. Cassandra thought she could see her veins.

“Look, you’re dying. We’re both dying,” Cassandra said. “But maybe you just have really bad tinnitus tonight. Who knows.”

Hazel’s eyes shifted, an eclipse passing through. “No. I know it’s not that.”

Cassandra thought the girl looked both older and younger in that moment, on the edge of life, skinny and small, strangely helpless. Who was Hazel to her, by then? A friend? A doomed mentee? Hazel had dragged her to parties and meetings and memorial services; she had bothered her with constant calls and that daily morning text, _just to make sure you’re okay._ When had their relationship shifted from hatred to acceptance? Was it after the first murder they’d seen together? The second? Or was it when she stopped lashing out whenever Cassandra called her by her own name instead of _Amaterasu?_

“I’m going to see my mum tomorrow,” Hazel said as she hoisted herself up to sit. “I’ve got the private plane going to Exeter. I think I’ll just...stay there, for the month,” She let the word hang in the room, knowing there was no need to elaborate. “You could come if you’d like. I bet Mum would love to meet you. We could-,”

“God, no,” Cassandra pinched her temple. “Your mom’s not going to want some random stranger interrupting her last days with her _dying kid._ ”

Hazel pouted. “You’re not a stranger.”

“What the hell am I, then? Just...have a good time,” Suddenly Cassandra felt completely winded. “Lay low. Don’t be stupid. Blah blah blah.”

Hazel swung her feet back and forth off the edge of the bed. Then she slid off of the sheets and Cassandra knew she was going for a hug before she even got close, wrapping her arms around Cassandra’s shoulders and snuggling her head against her cheek. Cassandra swallowed, took a deep breath, and patted her back; Hazel swayed slightly before managing to fit one of her legs in the chair at Cassandra’s side, a wavering noise coming from her throat.

“I’ll miss you. And I’ll call. I’ll text you all the time.” She forced out.

“Okay. That’s fine. That’s fine, Hazel-”

“S- _Shush._ Shush and let me hug you.”

She decides there is nothing at Valhalla.

-

It’s a little after midnight on January 2nd, 2016, when Cassandra sees black goop sprouting from the floor under her front door. There are two people in the world who can do that, and although she highly doubts Persephone would suddenly want to offer an olive branch, she unfurls her fingers from a wad of fate-string and checks the hole on the door anyway.

“Cass? I just want to talk-” Dionysus gets cut off by the door opening. The light in the hallway looks dull, but it’s far brighter than his lamp underground, and it makes him look even worse. She hadn’t properly comprehended how thin he’d gotten. He’s wearing an old Baphomet sweatshirt, probably fan-made, and it hangs off him as if a size too big.

“Get in the apartment.” Cassandra says, looking preemptively up and down the hall. It’s not as if the tabloids have closed down, even with the inevitable decline in material.

Dio hasn’t taken two steps inside before his eyes go wide. He scans the walls, taking in the mess of divination in front of him. “Oh, hell. You’re really doing it.”

“Of course I’m fucking doing it. What other option do we have?,” She retorts, putting the door chain back on. “Either somebody tracks down Persephone or the world becomes a rapidly dissolving _hell pit._ Real easy choice, there.”

She expects him to respond with some sort of optimistic platitude, or an expression of disbelief. “Verdandi and Skuld aren’t here?” He asks instead.

It catches her off guard. “What? No. They’re home for the holiday.”

Dio’s shoulders slump. When he turns to her he looks far more upset than he should be, worsened by the bags under his eyes. She realizes he’s put two and two together before he opens his mouth.

“You can’t do this _alone._ If you face her without back up you’ll probably- you- you _know,_ ” He’s worried about being a dick, she can tell; she wishes he wasn’t. “There’s got to be something I can do.”

She looks away from him and grabs a handful of thread, twists it between her fingers. It occurs to her that she could get him out of here in a minute if she wanted to. It would be so easy to say something awful. _Do you really like getting fucked up by your “friends” that much? How are you going to fight now that everyone’s decided you’re not worth following? Are you_ that _lonely?_

She sucks it up, for once, and picks a lighter option, but it comes out bitter anyway, too riled up by everything swimming in her head. “There’s nothing you _can_ do. I’m....I’m going to try to talk to her. And last I knew I was the only person she’d let spare a few words without throwing tentacles everywhere.”

“You think she’ll still listen to you?”

“Maybe.”

Cassandra purses her lips and tries to look as genuine as possible. She’s never been a great liar, if only because she’s spent so long obsessed with the truth that she had little reason to lie at all. There’s no real chance in talking to Persephone. She knows that well by now. It is going to be all of her- lack of fighting experience included- or nothing. She might have let Dionysus come with her a year ago, when he was still a force to be reckoned with, but these days he would lose his head. And losing one’s head is certainly an option.

 _Then why are_ you _tr_ _ying?_ She asks herself.

Dio is tracing his exhausted gaze over the mess of thread again. Both of his eyes are fine now, if “fine” means “the color of overripe tomatoes.” His hands are stuffed in his pockets a with a rigidity that makes it obvious he’s bottling something up. “That’s still bullshit. Not your plan, I mean- why it’s happening. This shouldn’t have to be all on you. Christ. I’m sorry.”

There’s something surprisingly unforced about the way he says it. It occurs to Cassandra they don’t know each other  _that_ well; most of the times they’ve met were at group meetings, or group battles. She takes a deep breath before she speaks. “Why do you... _care_ this much?”

Something flashes on his face before he covers it up with a joking smirk. “Well, you _are_ about to try to save the world. I have a bit of a personal investment in that.”

“I’m being serious, Dio.”

He takes his hands out of his pockets, only to fidget with one of his loose sleeves. He doesn’t look straight at her, and for a second she’s struck by the thought that he’s going to say something _especially_ stupid, something she really, really doesn’t need right now.

“You’re a good person,” He settles on. “You don’t deserve any of this."

She feels incredibly tired. She’d let him in with the intention of letting him down, but now the idea seems at once overly cruel and near impossible. There’s something endearing about his sheer tenacity and something pathetic about his lack of self preservation; either way, she’d rather not drag anyone else into this, and he’s one of the few people she doesn’t feel like verbally ripping apart.

She hopes she can pull off another lie.

“Fine,” She says. “You can come.”

Dio doesn’t smile, but he certainly doesn’t frown either, a mish-mash expression of surprise and- relief? A little fear? “I- okay. I can figure something out. I haven’t performed any miracles in awhile, but I could...,” He trails off for a moment, distracted. “Wait, when are you going? I thought you didn’t know where she was.”

“There’s only one other place she could be,” She tells him. “I’m going on Tuesday.”

She leaves on Monday.

-

**2014, OCTOBER**

“Persephone’s not in any of the literature, if you were wondering.”

Laura raised an eyebrow and smiled, bemused. It was painfully familiar and yet looked odd on her face, as if it was transplanted onto another body. Cassandra supposed she understood why. They were sitting in a hallway in Valhalla, across from one another under the cold white lights, waiting for a meeting to start.

The two of them hadn’t had a real conversation since Laura was covered in blood in the basement. Cassandra had gotten the most important things out of the way there; _you’re an idiot, do you know how much damage you’ve caused, we’re all fucking doomed,_ etcetera etcetera. There was plenty more to say, but it reinstated the point. She _could_ say it anyway. She liked the idea.

Laura pulled her cigarette- did she have an endless supply?- out of her mouth to respond. “Of course I’m not. Ananke wouldn’t let that happen.”

 _I’m_ wavered in Cassandra’s head. Laura told everyone else to call her a god, but she’d never corrected Cassandra. She probably knew the effort was useless. But that didn’t mean the bitter feeling was gone from Cassandra’s mouth at the turn of phrase.

“Well,” She said, harsher than she meant it to be, “I _suppose_ that’s not a problem anymore, huh.”

“ _Uh-huh._ ” Laura answered. It sounded just as it always had: painfully childish and perfectly natural. It sung in her mouth. Cassandra watched her lean back against the wall; it was a small motion, but something about it seemed surreal.

Laura Wilson- it _was_ Laura, no matter what she said- was _alive._ Maybe it was just now sinking in.

“I’m still so mad at you.” Cassandra mumbled.

Laura smirked. “I know.”

**2015, FEBRUARY**

Letting a murderer into your apartment is probably never a good decision. Letting a _drunk_ murderer into your apartment is probably worse. Either Cassandra let Laura take it out on her or on the rest of the world, though, and she knew which choice sat better with her. She’d have to live with it.

“Stay up,” She scolded, her hands on Laura’s swaying shoulders, trying to keep her down on the couch. “Or at _least_ lie on your side.”

Laura was giggling by then. Tickled, maybe. But her face had been wet when she came in, and half of her shaky laughs sounded like something else. “Cass, hey, c’mere,” She said, and raised an arm to wrap around Cassandra’s neck, giving a half-hearted shove that nonetheless succeeded in pulling Cassandra into the couch. “It’s _cold_.”

Cassandra’s legs ended up sprawled between Laura’s, her body lying atop the other girl’s more than hugging it. “Fucking _hell,”_ She fumbled for a moment before managing to get onto the other side of the couch, taking Laura by the sides again. “ _Please_ just sit still for one second and I will get you a blanket. Does that sound- _fuck!_ ”

Getting onto the couch had been a bad idea. Laura had taken the opportunity to lean onto her, her head drooped down on Cassandra’s shoulder, breath exhaling onto Cassandra’s neck.

Cassandra’s face felt hot. She didn’t bother guessing why (she did _not_ need that tonight). She spent a second trying to find something effective to say, biting her tongue to keep from sputtering something incoherent, before she realized that breaking through to a drunken death goddess was, perhaps, not a worthwhile use of her time. Eventually she settled for patting Laura on the back with a huff, scanning the room for a pillow to replace herself with.

“Cass?” Laura piped up.

“ _What._ ”

“Do you trust me?”

She hadn’t expected such a pointed question. She looked down at Laura. Her eyes were closed, almost as if she was asleep, and she had moved her arm so that it rested across Cassandra’s stomach, limp.

“Frankly, no,” Cassandra responded. “ _Especially_ right now.”

Laura giggled again, the shaking of her chest vibrating against Cassandra’s, surprisingly gentle. “I don’t trust me either.”

**2015, JULY**

Even the Underground had no excuse for being this cold in mid-summer, Cassandra thought, as she pulled a few golden strings from her fingertips to illuminate the crusty ceilings and muddy ground around her. There were vines everywhere, more than she’d expected, collected tightly around where Laura sat, toying with a thin one.

“Why do you think you’re here?” Laura asked, her face looking drawn in the candle-like light.

“Literally or metaphorically?” Cassandra responded, raising an eyebrow.

Laura tilted back on her vines, as if they were a bed, though they didn’t exactly look comfortable. “Metaphorically,” She answered. “I know you’re big on facts, but...”

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Yes, Laura, despite popular belief, I know what a metaphor is. But nobody’s here for a _reason._ ”

Laura turned onto her side. Then Cassandra could see that she was not playing with a thin vine but a strip of shadowy muck, letting it slither between her fingers like multi-headed snake. A tickle went up Cassandra’s spine.

“You don’t feel like,” Laura said, taking a breath between words, “there’s something you _have_ to do?”

Cassandra snickered. “Besides making sure you idiots don’t murder more of each other? No.”

Laura’s face contorted into some bleak combination of frustration and confusion. It was a face Cassandra would expect from herself, and it brought a pang to her chest. She opened her mouth to speak just as Laura sat up, the shadows licking and morphing in her palm.

“I want to try something”, Laura said, and snapped her fingers.

Any darts of fear shooting through Cassandra’s brain at the motion were quickly replaced with the feeling of sharp pins and needles when a shadow-vine slid its way up her arm, another, smaller appendage lingering closer to her face. “H- _Hey,”_ She yelped, her brain telling her to shake it off as if it was a gigantic worm. Her arm refused to make the motion. It was an odd sensation, one part of her body sliding into the half-performance and the other half not.

She’d thought about Laura’s first performance more times than she’d care to count in the months since it happened. At first she’d told herself that she’d just been stunned by the fact that Laura would trust her with all of that pain. Then she had contemplated the feeling of her legs giving out, and the warmth that had hit her skin, and she hadn’t been able to look at Laura the same way since. Had Laura noticed? Was that how a performance that intimate worked?

“How’s it feel?” Laura asked, one hand cupping her chin, looking like she was in a boring lecture. If anything, that made Cassandra feel worse.

“Uh, like _hell?_ ” Cassandra sputtered..

Laura bit her lip. “Oh. Let me take it off-”

“Wait. Just,” Cassandra said, not quite knowing where the words came from. “Keep it there for a second. I’ll get used to it.”

**2014, AUGUST**

They didn’t let her near Laura’s house. Something about smoke inhalation. She was consumed immediately by the sound of her pulse, bright white flashes in her eyes, and felt not quite out-of-body but buried-in-body. Was her mouth moving? Was her face pale? Was she angry?

Skuld and Verdandi were at her sides. Their hands on her arms felt like dead weights. When they lead her away they both tried to think gently, comforting softness brushing against her brain, but it was twinged with too much sadness and confusion and fear (fear of herself? What was she saying? Was she saying anything?) to have any real effect.

Her body cracked in half when they reach the apartment, some sort of spell broken. It was as if her shock had plummeted so high that it cycled around, and she felt made of dust, out of control in a completely different way than before, when she walked into her room and locked the door behind her and didn’t realize she was on the floor for a good five minutes.

Laura, Laura, Laura. What was she going to do with her? Always looking for trouble. Always such a mess. She would have to come back. Cassandra had to put her head on straight. Cassandra had to tell her that she was an idiot. Cassandra had to see her face again.

**2015, OCTOBER**

There was warmth and darkness on all sides of her, darting back and forth, shaking like a nervous child. This was full performance, or close to it, and it would have been easier to simply stay put and let it destroy her. She suspected that was the point. To raise her hand Cassandra had to focus on the thought, and wait a moment before it rose upwards, against rushing water, inky quicksand.

But the impact of the action was great- once her fingers closed enough to take ahold of the dark she could tear it open, the rush in her blood seeping out like a popped balloon. She stepped forward shakily, her knees weak, breath coming out short.

Laura was right there and not. If there was a color deeper than that of the underground, deep enough as to be not of this world, it was surrounding Laura at that moment, flickering her in and out of the world like the static at the end of an old tape. Every once and awhile Cassandra thought she could see a bright white skull, or a bloody hand.

“You _idiot._ ” She said.

For a minute there was only silence pure enough that it almost was white noise. Then she heard a fragmented- cry? no, a laugh, coming from much closer to her than she expected.

“I knew you’d be here,” And then there was Laura, looking just as pristine as ever, not sick, not hurt, simply standing there. But something was different; behind the always-present death in her eyes Cassandra noticed a presence she didn’t recognize. Laura tilted her head to the side, and the movement felt wrong, too slow or too fast.

“But there’s nothing you can do,” Laura said bluntly. “It’s already too late.”

Cassandra squinted at the shadows and made out Laura’s hands again. It hadn’t been a trick of the shadows; they _were_ bloody. It occurred to her she didn’t know whose blood. The news reports she’d read were about the sticky tendrils in the dark corners and bright lights of London, and the sheer dread that had overwhelmed anyone who glimpsed them. But there were no injuries. There were no deaths. At least not reported. Or not today.

“Don’t give me that shit, Laura. What’s going-”

“ _Stop,”_ The sound reverberated, echoed, like it had ripped open Cassandra’s skin and rooted in the muscle. “Saying her name.”

Anger flew into Cassandra so fast that a bitter cackle nearly crawled up her throat. “What? _Your_ name?”

There was a rush as if the wind had blown through, and Cassandra felt the darkness around her again, rougher this time, pure fury seeping out. They’d bickered about this before, Laura mumbling her usual _nuh-huhs_ and pretending she wasn’t contradicting herself by doing so. Cassandra never thought she _truly_ believed in it. It was a consequence of trauma, a coping mechanism, not a healthy one but one she embraced out of fear for the alternative. Cassandra understood it completely, and despised it with all of her being.

Laura grabbed the fabric at her shoulder and shoved her closer, leaving her to choke on the red-black rage surrounding her. “If you’ve ever divined _anything_ ,” she hissed, “You’d know Laura Wilson is _dead._ ”

With Laura’s hatred all around Cassandra found that any hate in her- no, pain, awful indignant dread that liked to rake its nails on every side of her brain until she let it out on everyone around her- had faded against something else. Laura’s teeth looked sharp and her hands were too strong, her body awfully hot so close to Cassandra’s, the clawing mess of her performance distinctly foreign. Cassandra had little energy to scream back at her.

“W-What happened?” She asked. “Please. Laura, tell me what’s going on.”

Laura laughed, the sound coming out of her like a wretched cough, her grip on Cassandra far too tight. “You wouldn’t understand. You’ve _never_ understood. I thought you _could,”_ She shook Cassandra back and forth, in slow movements, almost as if drugged. “But you just made it worse.”

A memory hit Cassandra, one she dwelled on more often than she’d like to admit. “It doesn’t have to be me who understands. Remember? But someone else could.”

“There’s isn’t anyone else,” Laura said softly, almost in a whimper. “There’s no one else in here. And there’s no one else who knows what I have to do.”

Cassandra tentatively reached her hands towards Laura’s back and neck, and after a moment Laura loosened her grip enough to let herself be pulled close. She flushed at how familiar the feeling of Laura’s head on her shoulder was, and distracted herself by rubbing circles into the girl’s back, hoping to find some comforting words that didn’t sound fake. The air loosened around them. Now there was nothing but the calm stagnancy of the underground.

Laura spoke before she did. “Cass?”

“ _Mmhm_. Fuck, listen, I-,”

“I promise I won’t hurt you until I have to.”

Cassandra took perhaps a moment too long to pull away, her fingers brushing through Laura’s hair, cupping the side of her cheek. Laura felt delicate in her arms, too delicate for a girl who had just shoved her so roughly, too doll-like to be a god of death. Her eyes were blank, rolling around in her head like painted marbles.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Cassandra asked.

Then Laura pulled away with all the force she’d lost, enough that Cassandra stumbled back, stunned. Black smoke rose from Laura’s pores and between her teeth, her eyes full of oblivion again. If Cassandra had been told that even the blood and bones in her body had changed, she could have believed it, seeing this unfamiliar figure in the dark.

The thought occurred to Cassandra- for the very first time, unlike everyone else- that this was not Laura Wilson.

“Go away. Listen to me, Cassandra, _please. Go away._ ” Persephone said, as the world closed in around her, vines slithering around her face and up her legs until there was no trace of her left, and Cassandra could feel against her the hell that had been left behind, images of red and the potent scent of mold, a tickle akin to flower petals in her throat-

And then she knew.

That was all. There had been no dramatic declaration or stunning revelation. She tasted the scent of rotting fruit on her tongue and the feeling had dredged up such painful familiarity that she understood everything in a second, like solving a math problem or turning on a light. It had not existed, and then it did.

All she had ever wanted was to understand. She understood, in that moment, that Persephone was the only thing left inhabiting a vacant corpse. And she understood that the end of the world was at hand.

She didn’t cry. That surprised her.

Instead she found her way back to her apartment and threw up in the bathroom, unthinking. Verdandi brought her soup in bed that she didn’t have the stomach to touch. But after that the divining was so _simple;_ each piece of evidence came together into the most perfect image, and she thought she knew who the real idiot was, right then, staring her in the face the entire time. She glared at her work for hours, curled up like a child, pretending the pressure of her legs to her stomach could quench the bile rushing in her.

What was there to cry about? She already mourned for Laura Wilson a year ago. There was no time for that now. She had nine months; it might as well have been much less. There was only one thing left for her to do.

And there were only three people left to tell. She went underground to tell Dionysus and The Morrigan, and only found Dio; he promised to tell Morrigan, as if it really would matter to her in the last two weeks of her life. Cassandra could remember a time when he’d deny any concept of smart, sincere Laura Wilson ending the world, of even hurting anyone; by then, though, he just gave her a stunned nod and didn’t fight.

She told Hazel in Valhalla, while a few Valkyries who hadn’t moved out yet wandered the halls, and watched the sun goddess set her sights on the ceiling.  

“That means,” Hazel pondered, teasing the idea around in her mouth, “someone has to stop her.”

A thought dug its claws into Cassandra’s head.

_It has to be me._

-

When she had first divined the end of the world, she had told herself the possibility of it truly happening was remote. She’d simply come upon a loose thread, a potential inevitability, emphasis on the _potential._ She had always been one of the sensible ones, certain the world would end in a whimper rather than a bang.

Now, she wonders: what happened to that _sensible_ Cassandra Igarashi? What happened to the woman who could at least pretend that she was confident in every word she said, and who usually was? Whatever happened to the woman who would have never believed in any of this, who would have pulled herself away from it in an instant, who would have just gone on with her life?

(She knows exactly what happened. She’ll never dare admit it.)

In Brockley, where the Wilson home had stood before, ash coats the ground. They’d peeled the remains of the building away months ago, when the tendrils started to appear around the city, but that hadn’t stopped the burning smell that had permanently congealed in the air. Not all of the neighbors have moved away, but standing in the middle of the lot, it feels as if they might as well be on the other end of the country.

Cassandra pulls a thread and finds what she’s been looking for in an instant: a dark passageway in the dirt. It can’t go to the underground, she realizes; she would’ve heard about it. This goes somewhere else. She’ll have to discover where, though she’d rather not.

For a moment an inexplicable loneliness takes her. She’d made a point to leave before Skuld and Verdandi arrived home, fraught by the idea of seeing their faces. She is so used to feeling the weight of their minds at her sides, there to reach out to, like a six and seventh sense. _I am going to die alone,_ she thinks; _I am going to die and no one will ever know how._

And yet she steps inside and lets the ash fall back into place behind her.

This void in nowhere is deep and dark and cold and yet her solitude fades in seconds. There is no one there and yet there is; she can feel someone’s fingers brush against hers, but when she reaches out there is nothing to hold. A pungent stench fills the air and then leaves as quickly as it came. She takes a breath and feels it die in her throat, and struggles before catching it again, sucking in burning air.

She says the words that have been brewing in her mind for months now, uncontrollably, again and again. “I hate you.”

 _Uh-huh,_ a voice responds, and Cassandra can see its teeth in her mind’s eye, the edges of its lips curled upward. _I hate you too_.

 


End file.
